In today's gospel reading, John the baptizer, who is in prison, sends some of his disciples to question Jesus, asking if he is indeed the promised Messiah. I find it interesting the things Jesus says confirm that he is indeed this promised one. "The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them."When you ask Christians what it means to be Christian, you get lots of different answers. Sadly, these answers sometimes say more about the cultural presuppositions of those questioned than they do about the ways of Jesus. Liberal or conservative, we all have a tendency to believe in a Jesus who talks and acts a lot like us. And so there is patriotic Jesus, meek and mild Jesus, social justice Jesus, sword wielding conqueror Jesus, and so on.
Because none of us are immune to this problem of fashioning a Jesus in our own image, it is a good idea to simply listen to Jesus now and then, doing our best not to filter what he says through our own biases. I wonder how well what Jesus points to in order to demonstrate he is God's Messiah fits in with what you or I think it means to follow Jesus. And if what Jesus is doing says anything about the Kingdom he is bringing, what does that say about how his followers should live and act?
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